Biggest problem with "Voyager" is that they didn't really take any chances.
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
Yeah, having the other shows' characters intrude on VOY wouldn't be good. It should be about the VOY characters and only them.
But the show should've been made after DS9 was done and maybe set after it too, so they'd have complete control over the Trekverse and could use the stuff DS9 wouldn't let them use while it was on.
IE, the 8472 alien annihilate the Borg to the point they no longer have a significant presence in the Delta Quadrant and all their Cubes have been destroyed. All they have left are their smaller Probes and Spheres and stuff, and everyone else have developed a way to stop Borg assimilation. None of the remaining Borg ships have the power to adapt to anything anymore.
The 8472 aliens have many more vulnerabilities in that their ships don't have shields so they can be blown to smithereens in normal combat, it's just that you have to avoid being blown up first. They won against the Borg because their alien energies have a bigger effect on Borg tech than anyone else, but others like Voyager won't be as heavily affected by 8472 weaponry.
It's up to Voyager to find a way to take out the 8472 aliens and kill off the remaining Borg and unite the Delta Quadrant. Fortunately they're both weak enough it's possible to do this.
Then have it turn out that the Female Caretaker brought the 8472 to our Universe as an experiment, and she's the last bad guy of the series. She's beaten, Kes ascends and becomes the new Caretaker and vows to look after the Delta Quadrant properly because with the Borg and 8472 aliens gone the other species are at peace. She sends Voyager home.
The end.
But the show should've been made after DS9 was done and maybe set after it too, so they'd have complete control over the Trekverse and could use the stuff DS9 wouldn't let them use while it was on.
IE, the 8472 alien annihilate the Borg to the point they no longer have a significant presence in the Delta Quadrant and all their Cubes have been destroyed. All they have left are their smaller Probes and Spheres and stuff, and everyone else have developed a way to stop Borg assimilation. None of the remaining Borg ships have the power to adapt to anything anymore.
The 8472 aliens have many more vulnerabilities in that their ships don't have shields so they can be blown to smithereens in normal combat, it's just that you have to avoid being blown up first. They won against the Borg because their alien energies have a bigger effect on Borg tech than anyone else, but others like Voyager won't be as heavily affected by 8472 weaponry.
It's up to Voyager to find a way to take out the 8472 aliens and kill off the remaining Borg and unite the Delta Quadrant. Fortunately they're both weak enough it's possible to do this.
Then have it turn out that the Female Caretaker brought the 8472 to our Universe as an experiment, and she's the last bad guy of the series. She's beaten, Kes ascends and becomes the new Caretaker and vows to look after the Delta Quadrant properly because with the Borg and 8472 aliens gone the other species are at peace. She sends Voyager home.
The end.
Well the novels do have a big Borg invasion.
^ (Anwar) You know with a little 'revisiting' those ideas could still work. The reality is Voyager ran its story the way they wanted to tell it .. but if there is such a thing as constructive ideas then I think building on what is there is the way to go. I like Species 8472 and could envision the conflict between them and the Borg redeveloping and all the pieces being put in place for a Voyager-esque return.
The end of Voyager was the end of 24th century stories. It would have been fitting to have all 3 concurrent shows lead into reunion / combo / mini series of sorts, celebrating all of 24th century/BnB Trek before leaving the air.
Enterprise then should have been done by completely different people.
That certainly would have been a better story for Kes.
Eh, that would be better off as a TV Movie done later. Voyager should've been about its' own characters first and foremost.
Actually, the OP is the main reason I stopped watching after Season 1.
In fact, I wasn't even halfway through "Caretaker" when I started to choke on how amazingly pretentious the entire production was, and it never actually deviated from this line throughout its entire run. I caught "Caretaker" on premier night on the launch of UPN and I remember this exact moment extremely vividly:
COMPUTER: Warning. Warp core microfracture. Breach imminent.
JANEWAY: What's the warp core pressure?
CAREY: Twenty one hundred kilopascals.
JANEWAY: Lock down the magnetic constrictors.
CAREY: If we lock them down at these pressure levels, we might not be able to reinitialise the dilithium reaction.
COMPUTER: Warning. Warp core microfracture. Breach imminent.
JANEWAY: We don't have a choice. We've got to get the reaction rate down before we try to seal it.
Now that seems like a small thing in hindsight, but younger me's reaction was a flash of pain accompanied by a desperate:JANEWAY: What's the warp core pressure?
CAREY: Twenty one hundred kilopascals.
JANEWAY: Lock down the magnetic constrictors.
CAREY: If we lock them down at these pressure levels, we might not be able to reinitialise the dilithium reaction.
COMPUTER: Warning. Warp core microfracture. Breach imminent.
JANEWAY: We don't have a choice. We've got to get the reaction rate down before we try to seal it.
Why the mindless word salad? "Shut down the core." "We might not be able to start it up again..." "No choice! Shut it down!"
But I'd already heard it, and now I couldn't UN hear it, and it was more and more noticeable all through the episode:
KIM: Whoa.
PARIS: What?
KIM: Sporocystian life signs.
PARIS: What?
KIM: Sporocystian life signs.
Am I supposed to know what that is? Or why it matters?
JANEWAY: It's virtually a desert. Not one ocean, not one river. It has all the basic characteristics of an M-class planet except there are no nucleogenic particles in the atmosphere.
TUVOK: That would mean the planet is incapable of producing rain.
JANEWAY: I've studied thousands of M-class planets. I've never seen an atmosphere without nucleogenics. There must have been some kind of extraordinary environmental disaster.
TUVOK: That would mean the planet is incapable of producing rain.
JANEWAY: I've studied thousands of M-class planets. I've never seen an atmosphere without nucleogenics. There must have been some kind of extraordinary environmental disaster.
It's called "dust," Janeway. You're saying there's no "dust" in the atmosphere.
And you had to come up with a bullshit technobabble reason for why this planet never rains? Not "There's evidence of rivers and oceans but they've all gone dry in the last fifty years" or even "There's evidence of lush vegetation in the past, but now it's a desert planet."
Well, okay, maybe they'll get their act together after the commercial break...
OCAMPA DOCTOR: In fact, he does. He designed and built this entire city for us after the Warming. The food processors dispense nutritional supplements every four point one intervals.
I don't know how long an interval is, and neither do the people you're talking to. So precisely telling me that it happens four point one intervals serves no purpose except to tell me how accurate your interval-counting skills are. Except I don't actually care about your interval-counting skills, therefore everything you've just said is meaningless.
Well shit, we've got some new aliens and that dodgy squirrel guy playing an angle. Which is pretty cool. Then the Ocampa's "dependence" thing and a battle with the Kazon... things got back on track. In fact, after this point the entire episode clipped up and turned into a pretty good story -- especially Tuvok figuring out the Caretaker's problem -- and I breathed a sigh of Relief. Yes, we had a rough start, but it ended pretty well. Of course, I missed the next episode (Parallax) and caught the one after it the week later...
JANEWAY: Mister Paris, can you identify the source of the wave?
PARIS: I'm not sure. Scanners are picking up a debris cloud in the red dwarf system we're approaching.
TUVOK: It consists of differentially charged polaric ions, Captain.
JANEWAY: Differentially charged? That would suggest a massive detonation.
PARIS: I'm not sure. Scanners are picking up a debris cloud in the red dwarf system we're approaching.
TUVOK: It consists of differentially charged polaric ions, Captain.
JANEWAY: Differentially charged? That would suggest a massive detonation.
You couldn't just say "sensors picked up a massive explosion?" Look, it's simple:
JANEWAY: Mister Paris, can you identify the source of the wave?
PARIS: Looks like there was a massive explosion somewhere in the red dwarf system we're approaching.
TUVOK: It consists of differentially charged polaric ions, Captain.
JANEWAY: Polaric ions? Weird... well, let's go in for a closer look.
"Time and Again" was actually a pretty good episode, all things considered. But each one after that had the same problem: ever-more convoluted space magic that basically screams at the top if its lungs "We couldn't think of anything, so we just made something up." It wasn't so noticeable when the episodes were good and the action moved along. And the "Delaney Sisters" running gag was kind of a cute touch too, IMO. And truth be told, I actually really got into the whole Seska/Kazon/Traitor subplot.
And then we got to the 37s...
KIM: What's that?
PARIS: That is an amplitude modulation receiving device. AM radio. Not sure we'll pick up much out here.
(Beep, beep, beep.)
PARIS: Whoa. What was that?
(Di di di, dah dah dah, di di di.)
TORRES: What is that?
KIM: It's too regular to be random interference.
TORRES: I'm running the signal through the ship's database. It's an ancient Earth distress call known as an SOS.
Really, the ENTIRE SCENE was deeply cringeworthy, made all the more so at the end, when somebody finally remembers the ship has a database and they could have just looked all this shit up without the goofy "What is this strange ancient device?" exposition.PARIS: That is an amplitude modulation receiving device. AM radio. Not sure we'll pick up much out here.
(Beep, beep, beep.)
PARIS: Whoa. What was that?
(Di di di, dah dah dah, di di di.)
TORRES: What is that?
KIM: It's too regular to be random interference.
TORRES: I'm running the signal through the ship's database. It's an ancient Earth distress call known as an SOS.
This was, of course, followed by:
KIM: There's a great deal of trinimbic interference in the upper atmosphere.
Tri...nimbic....
They're called "clouds," Harry. You're saying it's TOO CLOUDY.
But oh no, these are not ordinary clouds, these are fancy space clouds that cause "EM discharges..." Also known as "lightning."
Because having Starfleet's technology be affected by things like static electricity or even a bolt of lightning isn't believable enough, but this bullshit we just made up, didn't bother to explain and will never mention again is absolutely plausible.
I think EVERYONE who watched Voyager had their braking point eventually. Some of us (like my sister) made it as far as Season 3 before calling me up one day and said "I just can't do it... I just can't take any more of the silliness... it's like all their problems are made-up nonsense, but then so are all the solutions." A few made it all the way to Season 7 (apparently by skipping about two thirds of the episodes... wish I'd thought of that). But for me, the turning point was the 37s. You can't technobabble fucking CLOUD COVER and then expect me to take you seriously after that.
Or if your creative team isn't cranking out paint-by-the-numbers formula-based screenplays that apply a veneer of sophistication for sophistication's sake.
You do not, for example, need an "empty universe" to remember that your ship has a finite number of photon torpedoes. Unfortunately, "We've run out of photon torpedoes and need to find a way to replace them" doesn't fit the Star Trek formula, so they didn't bother.
"We've run out of raw material for the replicators and need to find a new source..." Nope.
"We have a giant hole in the side of the ship and we don't have enough METAL to patch it..." Nah.
"The Hirogen gutted half the ship and turned it into a giant holodeck and now we have to hot bunk because our ship is basically hollow now..." Meh. We'll put it back together by next episode. Don't ask us where we're going to get the new bulkheads, new conduits, bio-neural gelpacks or light fixtures... we've got replicators, or something.
Let's do a story about time traveling telepathic body snatchers instead.
^
Since I'm not asking for 7 years of conflict, or that it interfere with DS9 or be "DS9 lite" or "DS9 2.0" then most of these points I agree with.
My general feeling is a lack of consequences that were fully explored even as Voyager moved towards home. Just my subjective experience, but, as much as VOY is to watch, none of it felt like it mattered in the overall scheme of the story. And that's frustrating.
Let's be real-I watched Voyager when it first aired, and was not engaged with the characters of it or DS9. When I tried again, in seasons later, it didn't feel like much had changed, that it was the same story and so other things took my interest.
I at least appreciate the discussion from @Prax and @Sophie74656 who are making points that are making me rethink Voyager.
Please do me a favor, though, and don't presume my thinking.
I was tempted to read.. but I thought it would be a diatribe about resources and continuity and arcs and arks and barks and farts and all that tiresome critiquing that has been said repetitively in this thread any way. Like over and over and over. Is there a class for you vaulted Trek fans or whatever you define yourselves as? Like a mantra you all like to pass around? A kind of hit list? Go on admit it even you didn't read the whole tiresome thread.^
However the pictures are distracting.
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I'm only going by what you are sharing here for discussion. I responded to you saying you wanted to shut up and enjoy the show.
So, the assumption is its more fun for me to point out things that I don't like?
Again, I love it when my state of mind is assumed.
I don't actually give a shit about continuity. Or canon, for that matter. I'm honestly recalling that first night of UPN's (in hindsight, hilariously tragic) existence when I sat down to watch a new Star Trek show and thinking "Cool episode, nice ship, good music... who the HELL is writing this dialog?"
Got to about page 3. It's the same old shit again and again (kinda like Voyager).
My point, however, is that the structure of the stories THEMSELVES lacked imagination. If the basic external conflict is inexplicable gibberish, and then the SOLUTION is inexplicable gibberish, then you've just told me a story I do not really understand and can't relate to and therefore have NO REASON to care about. Give me a bunch of those kinds of stories in a row, and I'll pretty much stop listening to you forever.
That's a cop out not getting past page three.. wish I had had that luxury. Some things you can't unsee.
